Word: novels
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...interesting sample of the latter is . . . and Tell of Time, a 712-page novel based on the post-Civil War background of Author Krey's Texas forbears (the family still owns a plantation in the cotton-growing Brazos Valley of southeastern Texas). Here the tedium of the narrative contrasts particularly with the dramatic events in which the family was involved. The Civil War itself was only slightly more violent than Reconstruction Texas, with its swarms of ruined Confederate soldiers turned loose, its bitter landowners turned Ku Kluxers to fight a black army of occupation...
...plantation and talks with his wife and neighbors about the situation in general. In tone, these conversations are not very different from equally interminable conversations about his generally pleasant and prospering plantation affairs. And since both Cavin and his wife (an idyllic pair) are dimly characterized, the novel's total effect is to make the violence of Reconstruction seem as placid as Cavin's family is respectably heroic...
...Liberals, first novel by the able author of Revolution-1776, shows far fewer of these faults than some, but still needs a further purge. Author Preston has an attentive eye for present-day intellectuals' dilemmas, an attentive ear for their dialogue, considerable humor. But in pointing a solution, the best he can offer is a broken head...
PRAY TO THE EARTH-Evelyn Eaton-Houghton Mifflin ($2.50). A proper picaresque novel, as concentrated as a dried prune, about a rapscallion French peasant...
VOICES IN THE SQUARE-George Abbe -Coward-McCann ($2.50). First novel...